About Joseph Duggan

Joseph Duggan, a former White House speechwriter for President George H. W. Bush and a former Reagan State Department appointee, is an international business and public affairs consultant. He recently moved home to his native city of St. Louis.

President Trump enjoys strong grassroots Republican voter support for his campaign promise to move United States foreign policy away from the interventionism exemplified by the Bush-Cheney years. Finding support for that promise among voters was one thing. Finding it among the Republican foreign policy clerisy and GOP establishment officeholders is another matter. Often

The Republican Party establishment is extremely sensitive to Rep. Steve King’s alleged transgressions against political correctness. King stumbled into the clutches of intraparty opponents by appearing to confirm their “narrative” that his hardline immigration posture equates with “white supremacy.” Even Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell got into the act of denouncing King before the House

Texas Rep. Michael McCaul, the newly named senior Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, has been caught impersonating former Senators Jeff Flake and Bob Corker. One of McCaul’s first noteworthy actions in the new post is to criticize President Trump for exercising his constitutional authority regarding relations with foreign countries, in this case Saudi

During the 2016 campaign, NeverTrump biggie Elliott Abrams famously said that Donald Trump was unfit to sit in “the chair in which Washington and Lincoln sat.” It’s not too late for President Trump to have second thoughts about the appointment of Abrams late last month as special envoy regarding the crisis in Venezuela. Instead of

. . . and make it go away? President Trump will nominate David Malpass, to run the World Bank. Like his close associate Larry Kudlow, Malpass has been critical of the institution. The bank, created three-quarters of a century ago for World War II reconstruction, is WAY past its expiration date. Generation after generation, the

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) aligned with the NeverTrump faction of Republican senators Thursday to introduce and pass a resolution to “rebuke” President Trump. The president’s offenses? Trump dared to win the Republican nomination in 2016 and has dared, at least some of the time, to think for himself since taking office.

On Friday, following the dramatic arrest of a prominent Trump supporter on charges of lying to Congress, President Trump gave one of the nation’s most sensitive national security and diplomatic posts to another controversial figure who already had been convicted of lying to Congress. Has the NeverTrump Republican echo chamber gone berserk over

President Trump’s National Economic Council chief Larry Kudlow is on record saying the World Bank is an outdated, unnecessary relic of a bygone era. With an unexpected opening for the bank’s presidency, a post customarily reserved for the nominee of a United States president, there’s an opportunity to install a new chief who could begin

NeverTrump Republicans are buoyed by a sense of opportunity following the unexpected announcement on January 7 that World Bank president Jim Yong Kim is resigning in the middle of his second five-year term. The World Bank and its companion institution, the International Monetary Fund, were established by the United States and our allies

OK, let’s combine today’s two most obnoxious Washington-speak clichés into one ugly mashup:Trump has thrown the last adult in the room under the bus.“Mattis Exit Paves Way for Global Chaos” was the sober CNN top headline during the hours following the announcement Thursday of the defense secretary’s resignation.The end is near. If the Church